Would the Miami Heat have been fined for assembling the Big 3?

The Miami Heat’s Big 3 Era was a glorious time for the franchise, but would they have been fined for their efforts to bring it together under the new rules?

The Miami Heat will forever be synonymous with the Big 3 Era. It was a time where the temperature of the league was taken in Miami and all championship roads ran through South Beach.

From 2010-2014, the Miami Heat were not only a force to be reckoned with in the NBA, but they were a box office ticket attraction and a hub for the who’s who of the celebrity world. With the rolling out of new league tampering rules and regulations though, could that time have even occurred under the new rules? Moreso, would the Miami Heat have been fined for how those teams came together?

These questions are specifically framed around quotes given by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. In an interview with Sam Amick of The Athletic (subscription required), Commissioner Silver went all-in on the new rules and regulations surrounding tampering.

He basically said that if two players came together on their own volition to discuss possibly teaming up in a particular city or place, that would be fine by him and the new rules. He then noted that if it was felt that a particular player sought a meetup that could be deemed as being encouraged or pushed for by that player’s current team, then that is something the new rules would allow them to go after and that they would.

If you prescribe to the rules or rhetoric laid out in the previous thoughts from the commish, then there is nothing he could have done to the Miami Heat on one front, but could have on another. It sounds a bit more complicated than it actually is, so here it is explained.

In the case of LeBron James, he and Dwyane Wade are and have been on record as being really close for a very long time. In the particular case of James, the league couldn’t have done anything because they hang out so much and spend so much time together on their own accords.

Who would be able to prove that those conversations didn’t occur in an average hangout or meetup between the two, as opposed to a particular meeting being explicitly focused on it? No one could.

In the case of Chris Bosh, it may have been a different story. While they still all claim to be very good friends who remain parts of each other lives, prior to the Big 3 coming together no one could have told you anything about the relationship that the three of them had together or a relationship between CB and either LeBron or D Wade individually.

The fact that the Bosh part of the deal seemed to materialize from nothing may have been cause for concern for the league, thus triggering an investigation under the new rules. While they do indeed seem very close as friends, it isn’t that hard to believe that they actually were and are, but regardless of that fact it also still isn’t a certainty that they would have been pinched for the Bosh part either.

All in all, they would have still gotten away clean here. The prior relationships, organically between Bron and Flash combined with the rapport they established during the Olympics with Chris Bosh that they say was a key reason for even concocting the idea of a team-up, could and probably would have been proof enough that this was semi-organic, sort of. That is why I believe they wouldn’t have been fined for tampering, even under the newly initiated league rules.